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LETTER 



FROM TH£ 



HON. JOSEPH HOLT, 



UPON THE 



Policy of the General Government, 



r i>E3srr>i3sra- i^E"v^03i.xjTio3sr„ 



ITS OBJECTS, 



ITS PROBABLE RESULTS IP SUCCESSFUL, 



AND THE 



DUT¥ OF KENTUCKY IN THE CRISIS. 



SECOND EDITION. 



WASHINGTON: 

HENRY POLKINHORN, PRINTER. 

1861. 






Washington, D. C, June 24, 1 801. 
My Ds&b Father: 

The ?tar3 and stripes still float over the Capitol, and I sincerely trust that a kind 
Providence will ever protect the flaj of our country, and especially grant your prayer that 
if it nnust even be still further dishonored and trailed in the dust upon American toil, it may 
not be by the hands of those with whose lathers, in the earlier days of the Republic, you 
helped bear it in triumph in the face of a foreign foe 

The immediate future, it is true, looks dark, and if the only hope of future peace and 
t'anquility was to be predicated solely on the triumph and success oi the troops, I for one, 
should never expect to see the harmony of the States restored. There can be no permanent 
peace in a republican government which is not based on sound reason and justice, conse- 
quently, if the cause and position of the General Government can only be sustained by force 
of arms, then farewell to the American Republic. Does enlightened reason therefore declare 
in favor of the intesrky of the Union of all the States as it existed prior to the present unhappy 
condition of the country ? This, after all, is the great question for the masses of the people of 
the seceded States to determine, and that in the end they will respond yes, I have no doubt. 
The sooner therefore, that the causes, both Immediate and remote, whica have led to the 
present disturbances are understood and fully appreciated, the sooner will the trouble.^ end 
and peace be restored. As an instrumentality in this work, I believe the recent letter of Hon. 
Joseph Holt to the people of Kentucky, is destined to do more to hasten the hour when the 
entire North. South, East and West, shall forget past alienations in renewed pledges of love 
and attachment for each other, than a thousand regiments. So strongly has this letter im- 
pressed me with its importance, that I have had it re-printed in pamphlet form, th{it it may ba 
more conveniently exam ned and preserved, a copy of which I forward you by mail. 

Trusting that the hope and joy of coming good to a distracted nation, which the perusal 
of Mr. Holt's letter cannot fail to awaken in your bosom, will in a measure compensate for 
the grief which you felt at the fall of Sumter, and that your life may be spared to witness its 
tendencies and legitimate results in the restoration of peace and prosperity to our whoU country, 

I remain, as ever, 

Your affectionate son, 

THOS. H. DODGE. 



Washington, May 31, 18G1. 
J. F. Speed, Esq.: 

My Dactr Sir: — The recent overwhelming vole in favor of the Union in 
Kentucky lias afforded unspeakable <;raHlicalion to all true men through- 
out the country. This vote indicates that the people of that gallar.t 
State have been neither seduced by the arts nor terrilied by the menaces 
of the revolutionists in their midst, and that it is their fixed purpose to 
reniain faithful to a Government which, for nearly seventy years, has 
remained faithful to tliem. Still it cannot be denied that there is in the 
bosom of that State a band of agitators, who, though few in number, are 
yet powerful from the public confidence they have enjoyed, and who 
have been, and doubtless will continue to be, unceasing in their en- 
deavors to force Kentucky to unite her fortunes with those of the rebel 
Conlederacy of the South. In view of this and of the well known fact 
that several of the seceded States have by fraud and violence been driven 
lo occu[)j their present false and fatal position, I cannot, even with the 
encouragement of her late vote before me, look upon the political future 
of our native State without a painful solicitude. Never have the safety 
«nd honor of her people required the exercise of so much vigilance and 
of so much courage on their part. If true to themselves, the stars and 
stripes, which, like angels' wings, have so long guarded their homes from 
every oppression, will' still be theirs; but if, chasing the dreams of other 
men's ambition, they shall prove false, the blackness of darkness can but 
I'aintly depict the doom that awaits them. The Legislature, it seems, has 
determined by resolution that the State, pending the present unhappy 
war, shall occupy neutral ground. I must say, in all frankness, and 
without designing to rellect upon the course or sentiments of any, that, 
in this struggle for the existence of our Government, I can neither prac- 
tice, nor profess, nor feel neutrality. I would as soon think of being 
neutral in a contest between an officer of justice and an incendiary 
arrested in the attempt to fire the dwelling over my head ; for the Gov- 
ernment, whose overthrow is sought, is lor me the shelter not only ol 
hotae, kindred, and friends, but of every earthly blessing which I can 
hope to enjoy on this side of the grave, if, however, from a natural 
horror of Iratricidal strife, or from her intimate social and business rela- 
tions with the South, Kentucky shall determine to maintain the neutral 
attitude assumed for her by her Ltgislature, her position will still be aa 
honorable one, though falling far short of that full measure of loyalty 
which her history has so constantly illustrated. Her executive, ignoring, 
as I am happy to believe, alike the popular and legislative sentiment of 
the State, has, by proclamation, forbidden the government of the United 
Slates from marching troops across her territory. This is, in no sense, 
a neutral step, but oue of aggressive hostility. The troops of the Federal 
Government have as clear a constitutional right to pass over the soil of 
Kentucky as they have to march along the streets of Washington, and 
could this prohibition be elfL-clive, it would not onl^' be a violation ol the 
lunaamental law, but would, in all its tendencies, be directly in advance- 
ment of the revolution, and might, in aa emergency easily imagined, 
compromise the higiiesi national interests. I was rejoiced that the L;'gis- 
lature so promptly refused lo endorse this proclamation as expressive of 
the true policy of the Slate. But I luru away from even this to the bal- 
lot-box, and tind an abounding cuii:iolaiion in the convictioa it inspires, 



that the popular heart of Kentucky, in its devotion to the Union, is far 
in advance alike of legislative resolve and of executive proclamation. 

But as it is well understood that the late popular demonstration has 
ratlier scotched than killed rebellion in Kentucky, I propose inquiringrj 
as briefly as practicable, whether, in the recent action or present declared 
policy of the Administration, or in the history of the pending revolution, 
or in the objects it seeks to accomplish, or in the results which must fol- 
low from it, if successful, there can be discovered any reasons why that 
State should sever the ties that unite her with a Confederacy in whose 
councils and upon whose battle-fields she has won so much fame, and, 
under whose protection she has enjoyed so much prosperity. 

For more than a month after the inauguration of President Lincoln the 
manifestations seemed unequivocal that his Administration would seek 
a peaceful sclutiop of our unhappy political troubles, and would look to 
time and amendments to the Federal Constitution, adopted in accordance 
with its provisions, to bring back the revolted States to their allegiance. 
So marked was the effect of these manifestations in tranquilizing the 
Border States and reassuring their loyalty, that the conspirators who had 
set this revolution on foot took the alarm. While affecting to despise 
these States as not sufficiently intensified in their devotion to African 
servitude, they knew they could never succeed in their treasonable enter- 
prise without their support. Hence it was resolved to precipitate a col- 
lision of arms with the Federal authorities, in the hope that, under the 
panic and exasperation incident to the commencement of a civil war, 
the Border Sia'tes, following the natural bent of their sympathies, would 
array themselves against the Government. Fort Sumter, occupied by a 
feeble garrison, and girdled by powerful if not impregnable batteries, af- 
forded convenient means for accomplishing their purpose, and for testing 
also their favorite theory that blood was needed to cement the new Con- 
federacy. Its provisions were exhausted, and the request made by the 
President in the interests of peace and humanity, for the privilege of re- 
plenishing its stores, had been refused. The Confederate authorities 
were aware — for so the gallant commander of the fort had declared to 
them — that in two days a capitulation from starvation must take place, 
A peaceful surrender, however, would not have subserved their aims. 
They sought the clash of arms and the effusion of blood as an instru- 
mentality for impressing the Border States, and they sought the humili- 
ation of the Government and the dishonor of its flag as a means of giving 
prestige to their own cause. The result is known. Without the slight- 
est provocation a heavy cannonade was opened upon the fort, and borne 
by its helpless garrison for hours without reply, and when, in the progress 
of the bombardment, the fortification became wrapped in flames, the be- 
sieging batteries in violation of the usuages of civilized warfare, instead 
of relaxing or suspending, redoubled their fires. A more wanton or 
wicked war was never commenced on any Government whose history 
has been written. Contemporary with and following the fall of Sumter, 
the siege of Fort Pickens was and still is actively pressed ; the property 
of the United States Government continued to be siezed wherever found, 
and its troops by fraud or force, captured in the State of Texas in viola- 
lation of a solemn compact with its authorities that they should be per- 
raited to embark without molestation. This was the requital which the 
lone star State made to brave men who, through long years of peril and 

frivation, had guarded its frontiers against the incursions of the savages, 
n the mjdst of the most active and extended warlike preparations in the 
South, the announcement was made by the Secretary of War of the 



5 

seceded Stales, and echoed with taunts and insolent bravadoes by the 
Southern press, that Washinsfton City was to be invaded and coplured, 
and that the flag of the Confederate Slates would soon float over the 
dome of its Capitol. Soon thereafter there followed an invitation lo all 
the world — embracing necessarily the outcasts and desperadoes of every 
sea — to accept letters of marque and reprisal, to prey upon the rich and 
unprotected commerce of the United States. 

In view of these events and threatenings, what was tiie duty of the 
Chief Magistrate of the Republic ? He might have taken counsel of 
revolutionists and trembled under their menaces ; he might, upon the fall 
of Sumter, i)ave directed that Fort Pickens siiould be surrendered with- 
out firing a gun in its defence, and proceeding yet further, and meeting 
fully the requirements of the "let-us-alone" policy insisted on in the South, 
he might have ordered that the stars and stripes should be laid in the dust 
in the presence of every bit of rebel bunting that might appear. Bui 
he did none of these things, nor could he have done them without for- 
getting his oath and betraying the most sublime trust that has ever been 
confided to the hands of man. With a heroic fidelity to his constitutional 
obligations, and feeling justly that these obligations charged him with 
the protection of the Republic and its Capital against the assaults alike 
of foreign and domestic enemies, he threw himself on the loyalty of the 
country for support in the struggle upon which he was aoout to enter, 
and nobly has that appeal been responded to. States containing an ag- 
gregate population ot nineteen millions have answered to the appeal as 
with the voice of one man, offering soldiers without number, and treas- 
ure without limitation, for the service of the Government. In these 
States, fifteen hundred thousand freemen cast their votes intavor of can- 
didates supporting the rights of the South, at the last Presidential elec- 
tion, and yet everywhere, alike in popular assemblies and upon the tented 
field, this million and a half of voters are found yielding to none in the 
zeal with which they rally to their country's flag. They are not less 
the friends of the South than before ; but they realize that the question 
now presented is not onej of administrative policy, nor of the claim 
of the North, South, East, or the West; but is, simply, whether nineteen 
millions of people shall lamely and ignobly permit five or six millions 
to overthrow and destroy institutions which are the common property, 
and have been the common blessing and glory of all. The great 
thoroughfares of the North, the East, and the West, are luminous with 
the banners and glistening with the bayonets of citizen soldiers march- 
ing lo the Capital, or to other points of rendezvous; but they come in 
no hostile spirit lo the South. If called lo press her soil, they will not 
ruffle a flower of her gardens, nor a blade of grass of her fields in un- 
kindness. No excesses will mark the footsteps of the armies of the Re- 
public ; no institutions of the State will be invaded or tampered with, 
no rights of persons or properly will be violated. The known purposes 
of the Administration, and the high character of the troops employed, 
alike guarantee the truthfulness of this statement. When an insurrec- 
tion was apprehended a few weeks since in Maryland, the Massa- 
chusetts regiment at once offered their services lo suppress it. These 
volunteers have been denounced by the press of the South as "knaves 
and vagrants," "the dregs and offscourings of the populace," who would 
" rather filch a handkerchief than fight an enemy in manly combat ;" 
yet we know, here, that their disciplmeaud bearing are most admirable, 
and, I presume, it may be safely affirmed that a larger amount of social 
position, culture, fortune, and elevation of character, has aever beeo 



found in so lar^c an army in any age or country. If they g'o to the 
South, it will be as friends and protectors, to relieve the Union sentiment 
of th» seceded States from the cruel domination by which it i" oppressed 
and silenced ; to unfurl the stars and stripes in the midst of those who' 
]on<x to look upon them, and to restore the flag that bears them to the 
forts and arsenals from which disloyal hands have torn it. Tlieir 
mission will be one of peace, unless wicked and blood- thirsty men shall 
unsheath the sword across their path-way. 

It is in vain for the revolutionists to exclaim that this is '' subjugation.'* 
It is so, precisely in the sense in which you and I and alt law-abiding 
citizens are subjugated. The people of the South are our brethren, and 
while we obey the laws enacted by our joint authority, and keep a com- 
pact to which we are all parties, we only ask that they shall be required 
to do the same. We believe that their safety demands this; we know 
that our? does. We impose no burden which we ourselves do not bearj 
we claim no privilege or blessing which our brethren t)f the South shall 
not equally share. Their country is our country, and ours is theirs; and 
that unity both of country and government which the providence 
of God and the compacts of men have created, we could not ourselves, 
without self-immulation, destroy, nor can we permit it to be destroyed 
by others. 

Equally vain is it for them to declare that they only wish " to be let 
alone," and that, in establishing the independence of the seceded States, 
they do those which remain in the old confederacy no harm. The free 
Slates, if allowed the opportunity of doing .^o, will undoubtedly concede 
every guarantee needed to afford complete protection to the institutions 
of the South, and to furnish assurances of her perfect equality in the 
Union ; but all such guarantees and assurances are now openly spurned, 
and the only Southern right now insisted on is that of dismembering the 
republic. It is perfectly certain that in the attempted exercise of this 
right neither States nor statesmen will be " let alone." Should a ruffian 
meet me in the streets, and seek with his axe to hew an arm and a leg 
from my body, I would not the less resist him because, as a dishonored 
and helpless trunk, I might perchance survive the mutilation. It is easy 
to perceive what fatal results to the old confederacy would follow should 
the blow now struck at its integrity ultimately triumph. We can well 
understand what degradation it would bring to it abroad and what weak- 
ness at home; what exhaustion from incessant wars and standing armies, 
and from the erection of fortifications along the thousands of miles of 
new frontier; what embarrassments to commerce from having its natu- 
ral channels encumbered or cut off; what elements of disintegration and 
revolution would be introduced from the pernicious example ; and, above 
all, what humiliation would cover the whole American people for having 
failed in their great mission to demonstrate before the world the capacity 
of our race for self-government. 

While a far more fearful responsibility has fallen upon President Lin- 
coln than upon any of his predecessors, it must be admitted that he has 
met it with promptitude and fearlessness. Cicero, in one of his orations 
against Catiline, speaking of the credit due himself for having suppressed 
the conspiracy of that arch-traitor, said, " if the glory of him who founded 
Rcnie was great, how much greater should be that of him who had saved 
ii from overthrow after it had grown to be the mistress of the world ?" 
So it may be said of the glory of that statesman or chieftain who shall 
snatch from the vortex of revolution this republic, now that it has ex- 
panded from ocean to ocean, has become the admiration of the wwld, 



and has rendered the fountains of the lives of thirty tuiUious of people 
fountains of hajipiness. 

The vijjorous measures adopted for tlie safety of Washington and the 
Government itself may seem open to criticism, in some of their details, 
to those who have yet to learn that not only has war, like peace, its laws, 
but that ii has also its privileges and its dutie.-. Whatever of severity, 
or even of irregularity, may have arisen, will find its jusiitieaiion in the 
pressure of the terrible necessity under which the Administration has 
Deen called to act. When a man feels the poignard of the destroyer at 
his bosom, he is not likely to consult the law books as to the mode or 
measure of his rights ot self-defense. What is true of individuals is in 
this respect equally true of governments. The man wiio thinks he has 
become disloyal because of what the Administration has done, will prob- 
ably discover, alter a closer self-exammation, that he was disloyal be- 
fore. But for what has been done, Washington might ere this have 
been a smouldering heap of ruins. 

They have noted the course of public affairs to little advantage who 
suppose that the election of Mr. Lincoln was the real ground of the rev- 
olutionary outbreak that has occurred. The roots of the revolution may 
be traced back for more than a quarter of a century, and an unholy lust 
for power is the soil out of which it sprang. A prominent member ot 
the band of agitators declared in one of his speeches at Charleston, last 
November or December, that they had been occupied for thirty years m 
the work of severing South Carolina from the Union. When General 
Jackson crushed nullification, he said it would revive again under the 
form of the slavery agitation: and we have lived to see his prediction 
verified. Indeed that agitation, during the last fifteen or twenty years, 
has been almost the entire stork in trade of Southern politicians. The 
Southern people, known to be as generous in their impulses as they are 
chivalric, were not wrought into a frenzy of passion by the intemperate 
words of a few fanatical abolitionists; for these words, if left to them- 
selves, would have fallen to the ground as pebbles into thesea, and would 
have been heard of no more. But it was the echo of these words, re- 
peated with exaggerations for the thousandth time by Southern politi- 
cians, in the halls of Congress, and in the deliberative and popular as- 
semblies, and through the press of the South, that produced the exaspe- 
ration that has proved so potent a lever in the hands of the conspirators. 
The cloud was fully charged, and the juggling revolutionists who held 
the wires and could at will -direct its lightnings, appeared at Charleston, 
broke up the Democratic Convention assembled to neminate a candidate 
for the Presidency, and thus secured the election of Mr. Lincoln. Having 
thus rendered this certain, they at once set to work to bring the popular 
mind of the South to the point of determining in advance, that the 
election of a Republican President would be, per se, cause for a dissolu- 
tion of the Union. Tiiey were but too successful, and to this result the 
inaction and indecision of the Border States deplorably contributed. 
When the election of Mr. Lincoln was announced, there was rejoicing 
in the streets of Charleston, and doubtless at other points in the South ; 
for it was believed by the conspirators that they had reachea a tide in 
the current of their machinations which would bear them on to victory. 
The drama of secession was now open, and State after State rapidly 
rushed out of the Union, and their members withdrew from Congress. 
The revolution was pressed on in this hot haste in order that no time 
should be allowed for reaction in the Northern mind, or for any adjust- 
oieal of the slarery ismes by the action of Congress or of the State 



6 

Legislatures. Had the Southern members continued in their seats, a sat- 
isfactory compromise Would, no doubt, have been arranged and passed 
before the adjournment of Congress. As it was, after their retirement, 
and after Congress had become Republican, an amendment to the Con- 
stitution was adopted by a two-thirds vote, declaring that Congress 
should never interfere with slavery in the States, and declaring, further, 
that this amendment should be irrevocable. Thus was falsified the 
clamor so long and so insidiously rung in the ears of the Southern 
people, that the abolition of slavery in the States was the ultimate aira 
of the Republican party. But even this amendment, and all others which 
may be needed to furnish the guarantees demanded, are now defeated by 
the secession of eleven States, which, claiming to be out of the Union, 
will refuse to vote upon, and in effect will vote against, any proposals to 
modify the Federal Constitution. There are now thirty-four States id 
the confederacy, three-fourths of which — being twenty-six — must concur 
in the adoption of any amendment before it can become a part of the 
Constitution; but the secess on of eleven States leaves but twenty-three 
whose vote can possibly be secured, which is less than the constitutional 
number. 

Thus we have the extraordinary and discreditable spectacle of a revo- 
lution made by certain States professedly on the ground that guarantees 
for the safety of their institutions are denied them, and at the same time 
instead of co-operating with their sister States in obtaining these guar- 
antees, they designedly assume a hostile attitude, and thereby render it 
constitutionally impossible to secure them. This profound dissimula- 
tion shows that it was not the safety of the South but its severance from 
the confederacy which was sought from the beginning. Contemporary 
with, and in some instances preceding these acts of secession, the greatest 
outrages were committed upon the Government of the United Slates by 
the States engaged in them. Its forts, arsenals, arms, barracks, custom- 
houses, post-offices, moneys, and indeed every species of property within 
the limits of these States, vrere seized and appropriated, down to the very 
hospital stores for the sick soldiers. More than half a million of dollars 
was plundered from the mint at New Orleans. United States vessels 
were received from the defiled hands of their officers in command, and, 
as if in the hope of consecrating official treachery as one of the public 
virtues of the age, the surrender of an entire military department by a 
general, to the keeping of whose honor it had been confided, was deemed 
worthy of the commendation and thanks of the conventions of several 
States. .AH these lawless proceedings were well understood to have 
been prompted,and directed by men occupying seats in the Capitol, some 
of whom were frank enough to declare that they could not and would 
not, though in a minority, live under a Government which they could 
notjcontrol. In this declaration is found the key which unlocks the 
whole of the complicated maciunery of this revolution. The profligate 
ambition of public men, in all ages and lands, has been the rock on 
which republics have been split. Such men have arisen in our midst — 
men who, because unable permanently to grasp the helm of the ship, are 
willing to destroy it in the hope to command some one of the rafts that 
may float away from the wreck. The effect would be to degrade us to 
a level with the military bandits of Mexico and South America, who, 
when beaten at an election, fly to arms, and seek to master by the sword 
what they have been unable to control by the ballot-box. 

The atrocious acts enumerated were acts of war, and might all have 
been treated as such by the late administration ; but the President patri- 



otically cultivated peace — how anxiously, and how patiently, the country 
well knows. While, however, the revolutionary leaders greeted him 
with all hails to his face, they did not the less diligently continue to 
whet their swords behind his back. Immense military preparations were 
made, so that when the moment for striking at the Government of the 
United States arrived, the revolutionary States leaped into the contest 
clad in full armor. 

As if nothing should be wanting to darken this pa^e of history, the 
seceded States have already entered upon the work oi confiscating the 
debts due from their citizens to the North and Northwest. The millions 
thus gained will doubtless prove a pleasant substitute for those guarantees 
now so scornfully rejected. To these confiscations will probably suc- 
ceed soon those of lands and negroes owned by the citizens of loyal 
States; and, indeed, the apprehension of this step is already sadly dis- 
turbing the fidelity of non-resident proprietors. Fortunately, however, 
ii?firmity of faith, springing from such a cause, is not likely to be con- 
tagious. The war thus begun is being prosecuted by the Confederate States 
in a temper as fierce and unsparing as that which characterises conflicts 
between the most hostile nations. Letters of marque and reprisal are 
being granted to all who seek them, so that our coasts will soon swarm 
with these piratical cruisers, as the President has properly denounced 
them. Every buccaneer who desires to rob American commerce upon 
the ocean, can, for the asking, obtain a warrant to do so in the name of 
the new republic. To crown all, large bodies of Indians have been mus- 
tered into the service of the revolutionary States, and are now conspic- 
uous in the ranks of the Southern army. A leading North Carolina 
journal, noting their stalwart frames and unerring markmanship, 
observes, with an exultation positively fiendish, that they are armed, not 
only with the rifle, but also with the scaljying knife and tomahawk. 

Is Kentucky willing to link her name in history with the excesses and 
crimes which have sullied this revolution at every step of its progress? 
Can she soil her pure hands with its booty? She possesses the noblest her- 
itage that God has granted to his children; is she prepared to barter it 
away for that miserable mess of pottage, which the gratification of the 
unholy ambition of her public men would bring to her lips? Can she, 
without laying her face in the dust for very shame, become a participant 
in the spoliation of the commerce of her neighbors and friends, by con- 
tributing her star, hitherto so stainless in its glory, to light the corsair on 
his way ? Has the war-whoop, which used to startle the sleep of our 
frontiers, so died away in her ears that she is willing to take the red- 
handed savage to her bosom as the champion of her rights and the rep- 
resentative of her spirit? Must she not first forget her own heroic sons 
who perished, butchered and scalped, upon the disastrous field of Raisin ? 

The object of the revolution, as avowed by all who are pressing it for- 
ward, is the permanent dismemberment of the Confederacy. The dream 
of reconstruction — used during the last winter as a lure to draw the hes- 
itating or the hopeful into the movement — has been formally abandoned. 
If Kentucky separates herself from the Union, it must be upon the basis 
that the separation is to be final and eternal. Is there aught in the or- 
ganization or administration of the Government of the United States 
to justify, on her part, an act so solemn and so perilous? Could the 
wisest of her lawyers, if called upon, find material for an indictment in 
any or in all the pages of the history of the Republic? Could the most 
leprous-lipped of its calumniators point to a single State or Territory or 
community or citizen that it has wronged or oppressed ? It would be 



10 

impossible. So far as the slave States are concerned, their protection 
has been complete, ami if it has not been, it has been the fault of their 
statesmen, who have had the control of the government since its foun- 
dation. 

The census returns show that during the year 1860 the Fugitive Slave 
Law was executed more faithfully and successfully than it had been 
during the preceding ten years. Since the installation of President Lin- 
coln not a case has arisen in which tiie fugitive has not been returned, 
and that, too, without any opposition from the people. Indeed, the fidel- 
ity with which it was understood to be the policy of the present Admin- 
istration to enforce the provisions of this law has caused a perfect panic 
among the runaway slaves in the free States, and they have been escap- 
ing in muliiiudes to Canada, unpursued and unreclaimed by their mas- 
ters, is there found in this reason for a dissolution of the Union ? 

That the slave Stales are not recognized as equals in the Confederacy, 
has, tor several years, been the cry of demagogues and conspirators. But 
what is the truth 7 Not only according to the theory, but the actual 
practice of the Government, the slave States have ever been, and still 
are, in all respects, the peers of the free. Of the fourteen Presidents 
who have been elected, seven were citizens of slave States, and of the 
seven remaining, three represented Southern principles, and received the 
votes of the Southern people; so that in our whole history but four 
Presidents have been chosen who can be claimed as the special champions 
of the policy and principles of the Iree Slates, and even these so only in 
a modified sense. Does this look as if the South had ever been deprived 
of her equal share of the honors and powers of the Government 7 The 
Supreme Court has decided that the citizens of the slave Slates can, at 
will, take their slaves into all the Territories of the United States; and 
this decision, which has never been resisted or interfered with in a 
^ingle case, is the law of the land, and the whole power of the Govern- 
ment is pledged to enforce it. That it will be loyally enforced by the 
present Administration, I entertain no doubt. A Republican Congress, 
Rt the late session, organized three new Territories, and in the organic 
law of neither was there introduced, or attempted to be introduced, the 
slightest restriction ujion the rights of the Southern emigrant to brmg 
his slaves with him. At this moment, therefore — and I state it without 
qualification — there is not a Territory belonging to the United States into 
which the Southern people may not introduce their slaves at pleasure, 
and enjoy there complete protection. Kentucky should consider this, 
greatand undeniable fact, before which all the frothy rant of demagogups 
and disunionists must disappear as a bank of fog before the wind. But 
were it otherwise, and did a defect exist in our organic law or in the 
practical administration of the Government in reference to the rights of 
Southern slaveholders in the Territories, still the question would be a 
mere abstraction, since the laws of climate forbid the establishment of 
slavery in such latitudes; and to destroy such institutions as ours for 
such a cause, instead of patiently trying to remove it, would be little 
short of national insanity. It would be to burn the house down over our 
heads merely because there is a leak in the roof; to scuttle the ship in 
mid-ocean merely because there >s a difference of opinion among the 
crew as to the point of the compass to which the vessel should be steered; 
it would be, in fact, to apply the knife to the throat instead of to the can- 
cer of the patient. 

But what remains 1 Though, say the disunionists, the Fugitive Slave 
Law is honestly enforced, and though, under the shelter of the Sujjrenne 



W 



11 

Court, We can take our slaves into the Territories, yet, the Nortliern 
people will persist in discussing the institution of slavery, and tliprofure 
we will broak up the Government. It i^ true that slavery has bet-n very 
intemperalely discussed in the North, and it is equally true tiiat until we 
have an Asiatic despotism, crushinc; out all freedom of speech and of tlie 
press, I his discussion will probably continue. In this age and country 
all institutions, human and divine, are discussed, and so they ought to be ; 
and all that cannot bear discussion must go to the wall, where they ought 
logo. It is not pretended, however, that the discussion of slavery, which 
has been continued in our country tor more than forty years, has in any 
manner disturbed or weakened the foundations of the institution. On 
the contrary, we Uarn from the press of the seceded States that their 
slaves were never more tranquil or obedient. There are zealots — happily 
few in number — both North and South, whose language upon this ques- 
tion isalike extravagant and alike deserving our condemnation. Those 
who assert that slavery should be extirpated by the sword, and those who 
maintain that t|ie great mission of the white man upon earth is to en- 
slave tlie black, are not far apart in the folly and atrocity of their senti- 
ments. 

Before proceeding further, Kentucky should measure'well the depth of 
the gulf she is npproachina, and look well to the feet of herguides. Before 
forsaking a Union in which her people have enjoyed such uninterrupted 
and such boundless prosperity, she should ask herself, not once, but many 
times, WHY do I go, and where am I going ? In view of what has been 
said, it would be difficult to answer the first branch of the inquiry, but 
the answer to the second part is patent to all, as are the consequences 
wiiicli would follow the movement. In giving her great material and 
moral resources to the support of the Southern Confederacy, Kentucky 
might prolong the desolating struggle that rebellious States are making 
to overthrow a Government which they have only known in its bless- 
ings , but the triumph of the Government would nevertheless be cer- 
tain in the end. She would abandon a Government strong and able 
to protect her, for one that is weak, and that contains, in the very 
elements of its life, the seeds of distraction, and early dissolution. She 
would adopt, as the law of her existence, the right of secession — a 
riijht whicii has no foundation in jurisprudence, or logic, or in our 
political history ; which Madison, the father of the Federal Constitu- 
tion, denounced ; which has been denounced b\' most of the States and 
prominent statesmen now insisting upon its exercise ; which, in intr()- 
ducing a principle cf indefinite disintegration, cuts up all confederate 
governments by the root, and gives them over a prey to the caprices, and 
passions, and transient interests of their members, as autumnal leaves are 
given to the winds which blow upon them. In 1S14, the Richmond 
Etiquirer, then as now, the organ of public opinion in the South, pro- 
nounced secession to be treason, and nothing else, and such was then the 
doctrine of Southern statesmen. What was true then is equally true 
now. The prevalence or this pernicious heresy is mainly the fruit of 
tliat larce called ""state njyhts. ' whicn demaguoues have been so long 
playing under tragic masks, and which has done Tiore than all things 
else to unsettle the foundations ot the republic, by estranging the people 
from the Federal Goveinmeni, as one to be distrusted and resisted, instead 
of being, what it is, emphaiicallv tlieir own creation, at all times obe- 
dient to their will, and in its ministrations the grandes'. reflex of the 
greatness and bi'neficence of popular power that has ever ennobled the 
lU:>iorv of our race. Said Mr. Clay: " 1 owe a supreme allcgtaoce to 



12 

the General Government, and to my State a subordinate one." And this 
terse language disposes of the whole controversy which has arisen out of 
the secession movement in regard to the allegiance of the citizen. As 
the powers of the State and Federal Governments are in perfect har- 
mony with each other, so there can be no conflict between the allegi- 
ance due to them; each, while acting within the sphere of Us consiitu- 
tional authority, is entitled to be obeyed ; but when a State, throwing 
ofl" all constitutional restraints, seeks to destroy the General Government, 
to say that its citizens are bound to follow it in this career of crime, and 
discard the supreme allegiance they owe to the government assailed, is 
one of the shallowest and most dangerous fallacies that has ever gained 
credence among men. 

Kentucky, occupying a central position in theUnion, is now protected 
from the scourge of foreign war, however much its ravages may waste 
the towns and cities upon our coasts or the commerce upon our seas; but, 
as a member of the Southern Confederncy, she would be a frontier State, 
and necessarily the victim of those border feuds and conflicts which have 
become proverbial in history alike for their fierceness* and frequency. 
The people of the South now sleep quietly in their beds, while there is 
not a home in infatuated and misguided Virginia, that is not filled with 
the alarms and oppressed by the terrors of war. In thefateof this ancient 
Commonwealth — dragged to the altar of sacrifice by those who should 
have stood betv^een her bosom and eveiy foe — Kentucky may read her 
own. No wonder, therefore, that she has been socoaxingly besought to 
unite her fortunes with those of the South, and to lay down the bodies of 
her chivalric sons as a breast-work, behind which the Southern people 
may be sheltered. Even as attached to the Southern Confederacy she 
would be weak for all the purposes of self-protection as compared with 
her present position. But amid the mutations incident to such a help- 
less and self-disintegrating league, Kentueky would probably soon find 
herself adhering to a mere fragment of the Confederacy, or, it may be, 
standing Entirely alone, in the presence of tiers of free States with popu- 
lations exceeding by many millions her own. Feeble States, thus sepa- 
rated from powerful and warlike neighborhoods by ideal boundaries, or by 
rivers as easily traversed as rivulets, areas insects that feed upon the 
lion's lip — liable at every moment to be crushed. The recorded doom 
of multi'udes of such has left us a warning too solemn and impressive to 
be disregarded. 

Kentucky now scarcely feels the contribution she makes to support the 
Government of the United States; but as a member of the Southern 
Confederacy, of whose policy free-trade will be a cardinal principle, she 
will be burdened with direct taxation to the amount of double, or it may 
be triple, or quadruple that which she now pays into her own treasury. 
Superadded to this will be required from her her share of those vast outlays 
necessary for the creation of a navy, the erection of forts and custom- 
houses along a frontier of several thousand miles, and for the mainte- 
nance of that large standing army which will be indispensable at once 
for her safety, and for imparting to the new government that strong mil- 
itary character which, it has been openly avowed, the peculiar institu- 
tions of the South will inexorably demand. 

Kentucky now enjoys for her peculiar institution the protection of the 
Fugitive Slave Law, loyally enforced by the Government; and it is this 
law, effective in its power of recapture, but infinitely more potent in its 
moral asency in preventing the escape of slaves, that alone saves that in- 
stitution in the Border States from utter extinction. She cannot carry 



13 

ttiis law with her into the new Confccieracy. She will virtually have 
Canada brought to her doors in the form of Free States, wliose popula- 
tion, relieved of all moral and constitutional obligations to deliver up fu- 
gitive slaves, will stand with open aims inviting and welcoming tiiem, 
and defending them, if need be, at the point of the bayonet. Under such 
influences, slavery will perish rapidly away m Kentucky, as a bail of 
snow melts in a summer's sun. 

Kentucky, in her soul, abhors the African slave-trade, and turns away 
with unspeakable loathing from the red altars of King Dahomey. But 
although this traffic has been temporarily interdicted by ihe seceded 
States, it is well understood that this step has been taken as a mere 
measure of policy for the purpose of impressing the Border States, and 
of conciliating the European powers. The ultimate legalization of this 
trade, by a Republic professing to be based upon African servitude,'must 
follow as certainly as does the conclusion from the premises of a mathe- 
matical pro|)osition. Is Kentucky prepared to see the hand upon the 
dial plate oi her civilization rudely thrust back a century, and to stand 
before the world the confessed champion of the African slave-hunter? 
Is she, with htr unsullied fame, ready to become a pander to the rapacity 
of the African slave-trader, who burdens the very winds of the sea 
with the moans of the wretched captives whose limbs he has loaded 
with chains, and whose hearts he has broken? I do not, I cannot be- 
lieve it. 

For this catalogue of what Kentucky must suffer in abandoning her 
present honored and secure position, and becoming a member of the 
Southern Confederacy, what will be her indemnity ? Nothing, abso- 
lutely nothing. The ill-woven ambition of some of her sons may possi- 
bly reach the Presidency of the newfRepublic; that is aU. Alas ! alas! 
for that dream of the Presidency of a Southern Republic, which has dis- 
turbed so many pillows in the South, and perhaps some in the West 
also, andwhose lurid light, like a demon's torch, is leading a nation to 
perdition. 

The clamor, that in insisting upon the South to obey the laws, the 
great principle that all popular governments rest upon the consent of the 
governed, is violated, should not receive a moment's consideration. Pop- 
ular government does, indeed, rest upon the consent of the governed, but 
it is upon the consent, iiot of all, hut of a majority of the governed. Crim- 
inals are every day punished and made to obey the laws, certainly 
against their will, and no man supposes that the principle referred to is 
thereby invaded. A bill passed by a legislature, by the majority of a 
single vote only, though the constituents of all who voted against it 
should be in fact, as they are held to be in theory, opposed to its pro- 
visions, still is not the less operative as a iaw, and no right of self-gov- 
ernment is thereby trampled upon. The clamor alluded to assumes that 
the Slates are separate and independent governments, and that laws en- 
acted under the authority of all may be resisted and repealed at the 
pleasure of each. The people of the United States, so far as the powers 
of the General Government are concerned, are a unit, and laws passed by 
a mjority of all are binding upon all. The laws and Constitution, 
however, which the South now resists, have been adopted by her sanc- 
tion, and the right she now claims is that of a feeble minority to repeal 
what a majority has adopted. Nothing could be more fallacious. 

Civil war, under all circumstances, is a terrible calamity, and yet, 
from the selfish ambition and wickedness of men, the best governments 



14 

have not been able to escape it. In regarding tliat which has been forced 
upon the Government of the United Slates, Kentucky should not look 
so much at the means which may bt necessarily employed in its prose- 
cution, as at the machinations by which this national tragedy has been 
brought upon us. When I look upon this land, a few months since so 
prosperous, so tranquil, and so free, and now behold it desolated by 
war, and the firesides of its thirty millions of people darkened, and their 
bosoms wrung with anguish, and know, as I do, that all this is the 
work of a score or two of men, who, over all this national ruin and 
despair, are preparing to carve wiih the sword their way to seats of per- 
manent power, I cannot but think that they are accumulating upon their 
souls an amount of guilt hardly equalled in all the atrocities of treason 
and of homicide that have degraded the annals of our race from the 
foundations of the world. Kentucky may rest well assured that this con- 
flict, which is one of self-defense, will be pursued on the part of the Gov- 
ernment in the paternal spirit in which a father seeks to reclaim his erring 
ofl'^pring. No conquest, no eHusion of blood is sought. In sorrow, not 
in anger, the prayer of all is, that the end may be reached without loss 
of life or waste of property. Among the most powerful instrumentali- 
ties relied on for re-establishing the authority of the Government, is that 
of the Union sentiment of the South, sustained by a liberal press. It is 
now trodden to the earth under a reign of terrorism which has no parallel 
but in the worst days of the French revolution. The presence of the 
Government will enable it to rebound and look its oppressors in the face. 
At present we are assured that in the seceded States no man expresses an 
opinion opposed to the revolution but at the hazard of his life and property. 
Thp only light which is,adniittenl into political discussion is that which 
flashes from the sword or gleams from glistening bayonets. A few days 
since, one of the United Slates Senators from Virginia published a mani- 
festo, in which he announces, with oracular solemnity and severity, ih it 
all citizens who would not vote for secession, but were in favor of the 
Union — not should or ought to — but '' must leave the State.'' These 
words have in them decidedly the crack of tlie overseer's whip. The 
Senator evidently treats Virginia as a great negro quarter, in which the 
lash is the appropriate emblem of authority, and the only argument he 
will condescend to use. However the freemen of other parts of that State 
may abase themselves under the exercise of this insolent and proscriplive 
tyranny, should the Senator,with this scourge of slaves, endeavor todrive 
the people of Western Virginia from their homes, I will only say, in the 
language of the narrative of Gilpin's ride: 

'•May I be there to see." 

It would certainly prove a deeply interesting spectacle. 

It is true that before this deliverance of the popular mind of the South 
from the threatenings and alarm which have subdued it can be accom- 
plished, the remorseless agitators who have made this revolution, and 
now hold its reins, must be discarded alike from the public confidence 
and the public service. The country in its agony is feeling their power, 
and we well undersiand liowdiflScult will be the task of overthrowing 
the ascendency they have secured. But the Union men of the South — 
believed to be in the majority in every seceded State, except, perhaps, 
South Carolina — aided by the presence of the Government, will be ful- 
ly equal to the emergency. Let these agitators perish, politically, if 
need be, by scores; 



15 V 

•*A tiri-ulli can iuhKk Uu'Di uv a I>t; iitli 1im> njiitle" 

but destroy this Republic and — 

"\V'liere i< lliiil Pronif" hfan heiit, 
Tliul can its light rrlunc?" 

Once entombed, when will the Angel of the Rosurreclion descend to 
the portals of its sepulchre ? There is not a voice which comes to us from 
the cemetery of nations that does not answer : "Never, never !" Amid 
the torments of our perturbed existence, we may have glimpses of rest and 
of freedom, as the maniac has glimpses of reason between the paroxysms 
of his madness, but we shall attain to neither national dignity nor nation- 
al repose. We shall be a mass of jarring, warring, fragmentary Stales, 
enfeebled and demoralized, without power at home, or respectability 
abroad, and, like the republics of Mexico and South America, we will drift 
away on a shoreless and ensanguined sea of civil commotion, from 
which — if the teachings of history are to be trusted — we shall be finally 
rescued by the iron hand n[ some military wrecker, who will coin the 
shattered elements of our greatness and of our strength into a diadem 
and a throne. Said M. Fould, the great French statesman, to an Ameri- 
can citizen, a few weeks since: "Your Republic is dead, and it is proba- 
bly the last the world will ever see. You will have a reign of terrorism, 
an<l after that two or three monarchies." All this may be verified, 
should this revolution succeed. 

Let us then twine each thread of the glorious tissue of our country's 
flag about our heart-strings, and looking upon our homes and catching the 
spirit that breathes upon us from the battle fields of our fathers, let us re- 
solve that come weal or woe, we will in life and in death, now and forever, 
stand by the stars and stripes. They have fioated over our cradles, let it 
be our prayer and ourstruggle that they shall float over our graves. They 
have been unfurled from the snows of Canada to the plains of New Or- 
leans and to the halls of the Montezumas, and amid the solitudes of every 
sea ; and everywhere, as the luminous symbol of resistless and beneficent 
power, they have led the brave and the free to victory and to glory. It 
has been my fortune to look upon this flag in foreign lands and amid the 
gloom of an oriental despotism, and right well do I know, by contrast, liow 
bright are its stars, and how sublime are its inspirations ! If this banner, 
the emblem for us of all that is grand in human history, and of all that 
is transporting in human hope, is to be sacrificed on the altars of a Sa- 
tanic ambition, and thus disappear forever amid the night and tempests 
of revolution, then will I leel — and who shall estimate the desolation of 
that feeling ? — that the sun has indeed been stricken from the sky of our 
lives, and that henceforth we shall be wanderers and outcasts, with 
nought but the bread of sorrow and of penury for our lips, and with hands 
ever outstretched in feebleness and supplication, on which, in any hour, a 
military tyrant may rivet the fetters of a despairing bondage. May God 
in his infinite mercy save you and me, and the land we so much love 
from the doom of such a degradation. 

No contest so momentous as this has arisen in human history, for, 
amid all the conflicts of men and of nations, the life of no such Govern- 
ment as ours has ever been at stake. Our fathers won our independence 
by the blood and sacrificesof a seven years' war, and we have maintained 
it against the assaults of the greatest power upon the earth ; and the ques- 
tion now is, whether we are to perish by our own hands, and have the epi- 
taph of the suicide written upon our tomb. The ordeal through which 
we are passing must involve immense sulfering and losses for us all, but 



16 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



III Hi nil 

013 760 115 



the expenditure of not merely hundreds of millions but of billions af 
treasure will be well made, if the result shall be the preservation of our 
institutions. 

Could my voice reach every dwelling in Kentucky, I would implore its 
inmates — if they would not have the rivers of their prosperity shrink 
away, as do unfed streams beneath the summer heats — to rouse themselves 
from their lethargy, and fly'to the rescue of theircountry before it isever- 
lastmgly too late. Man should appeal to man, and neighborhood to 
neighborhood, until the electric fires of patriotism shall flash from heart 
to heart in one unbroken current throughout the land. It is a time in 
which the workshop, the office, the counting-house, and the field may 
well be abandoned for the solemn duty that is upon us, for all these toils 
will but bring treasure, not for ourselves, but for the spoiler, i{ this revo- 
lution is not arrested. We are all, with our every earthly interest, 
embarked in mid-ocean on the same common deck. The howl of the 
storm is in our ears,j and " the li2{\JfliArj'-S red glare is painting hell on the 
sky," and while the noble s^ip pitches and rolls under the lashings of the 
waves, the cry is heard that she has sprung a leak at many points, and that 
the rushing "vCrrrers are mounting rapidly in the hold. The man who, in 
such an hour, will not work at the pumps, is either a maniac or a monster 
Sincerely yours, J. HOLT. 



LIBRARY OF co^Q,^^^ 





013 760 115 1 



pH8^ 



